


The Rooster Princess

by Eshnoazot



Series: Queen Ascendant [2]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Culture, Gen, History, Jewish Character, Judaism, Mythology - Freeform, Sailor Moon - Freeform, Values, Worldbuilding, stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 15:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17531027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eshnoazot/pseuds/Eshnoazot
Summary: Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the universe.





	The Rooster Princess

**Author's Note:**

> This was entirely written between midnight and 4AM on a Friday night, after I'd drunk a bottle of gin. There will absolutely be spelling mistakes.

Before her family fled Russia, her Aunt Nino had studied literature and history. Jupiter first learns about this when she is five years old and watching cartoons on the TV beside her cousins. Aunt Nino tuts her tongue when she catches her but doesn’t issue any rebukes. Instead, she waits until Jupiter is curled up in her bed and perches herself on the edge of the worn dresser.

“Those stories are not good for you, _solnyshko_ ,” Her Aunt Nino announces, “The stories that a culture, a people, tell their children are _important_. They tell of the values that they want their children to know and to be.”

Jupiter squints her eyes, “I like watching the Simpsons.”

Aunt Nino makes a distressed noise, “And what do you learn from that! That fathers must strangle their sons!”

“It’s not that that,” Jupiter grumbles, but already feels her Aunt’s piercing eyes and wisely stays silent.

“I will make you a promise, little Jupiter,” Her Aunt finally announces, “I will not tell your mother that you are watching terrible American cartoons, but you will allow me to read you better stories, so you may learn _good values_.”

Jupiter sighs and looks miserable, but if her mother knew she was watching the Simpsons, she’d never be left alone again to watch anything on the TV.

“Fine,” Jupiter grumbles, and snuggles deeper in her bed, “…Please don’t tell mama.”

“I will not,” Her Aunt vows, “But you will listen to my story tonight.”

Her Aunt doesn’t need a book to read from, and she never does. She stores these stories inside her head, and inside her heart and smiles broadly as she tells them.

_“In some kingdom, in some land, there lived a prince who lived with his father and mother, the king and queen, in a splendid fashion. He received the finest education and upbringing. But there were many duties as a Prince, and the boy began to feel great pain being responsible for a whole kingdom and the many problems within. The boy saw that he had gold upon gold, while others in his land starved. He went to his parents and pleaded with them, but they did not see the world the way he did. The boy began to question who he was! What he was to do! And he decided, that he could be a Prince no longer, and that he was really a rooster, and not a human boy!”_

Jupiter giggles at the story, and Aunt Nino brightens considerably.

_“At first the King and Queen thought their son was joking, for he was a funny boy, but then the boy stopped joining them at their royal table, and instead, do you know what he did, Jupiter?”_

Jupiter shook her head.

 _“He moved under the table and sat there naked!”_ Jupiter giggles at Aunt Nino’s story, _“This is no laughing matter Jupiter! The poor naked boy sat under the table pecking at crumbs. The royal family was very embarrassed, and they swore no expense to cure their son! They sent for the finest doctors across all the land, and the best three doctors came and tried to cure him! The first told the Prince ‘You must stop acting like a rooster this instance!’ and it caused nothing to happen, the second declared that if the boy were really a rooster he should be crowing at the dawn of the day, and if he didn’t, he wasn’t really a rooster. The next morning the boy started crowing at dawn! The third doctor decided that the boy was under a magical curse and tried to break the spell by rubbing evil-dispelling herbs upon the boy’s bed. The boy started sleeping in the henhouse at night! Not one of them could cure the rooster prince!”_

“No one?” Jupiter asked curiously, pulling her blankets up to beneath her chin, “No doctor at all?”

“No,” Aunt Nino gravely responded, _“But one day, when the King and Queen thought all were lost, a gentle kindly man came to the palace and declared ‘I hereby offer to cure the prince free of charge! My only condition is that no one interferes with anything I do!’ The gentle man was dirty and thin-clothed and old and ugly. The King and Queen upturned their nose, and agreed, for they were desperate, but declared that he were not to stay in their castle. And the man heard this and promised that in the morning, he would begin.”_

“Did he cure the prince?” Jupiter cut in, “Did he have a magic potion? Is he a wizard?”

“Hush, Jupiter, be patient,” Aunt Nino chastised, _“The following morning, the prince had company under his table. It was the wise man, and he was naked! ‘What are you doing here?’ asked the rooster prince. The wise man replied ‘Why are you here?’ and the prince thought about it and said ‘I am a rooster!’ So the wise man responded ‘Well, I am also a rooster!’. The wise man pecked at the crumbs and crowed like a rooster! The Prince was convinced, and so the wise man came down to breakfast every day for a week, crowing like a rooster and pecking at crumbs! That night, as the rooster prince returned to his henhouse, he say the old man sleeping under a thin blanket in the open garden and invited his fellow rooster to share his henhouse. The rooster prince shared his blanket and bread with the cold, hungry, achy old traveler and promised that they would wake up and crow at the sun rising together!”_

“That’s silly,” Jupiter pointed out with a frown.

“Eh?” Aunt Nino responded, _“And so they did. Every morning the two would crow at the rising sun and then head to breakfast! One morning, the wise man signaled to the king to bring him a shirt. He said to the Prince, ‘I don’t see any reason a rooster can’t wear a shirt!’ The Prince thought about it and agreed, and soon, the Prince was wearing a shirt. The wise man convinced, every day for a week, to come down to breakfast and crow like a rooster and peck at the crumbs! A week later, the wise man signaled to the King to bring him a pair of pants, and he said to the Prince, ‘Is it forbidden for roosters to wear pants? Surely not!’ and the Prince thought about it and soon the two were wearing both shirts and pants, crowing like roosters and pecking at crumbs!”_

“Oh!” Jupiter gasped, “That’s clever!”

“Don’t spoil the ending,” Aunt Nino replied with a smile, _“It continued every day, and the wise man convinced the rooster Prince that it was not forbidden for roosters to eat human food, which was surly tastier. Then came sitting at the table and enjoying human conversation! Soon, the rooster prince was a rooster no more, but he always remembered that he had once been a rooster.”_

Jupiter blinked, “That’s cool.”

“Cool?” Aunt Nino blinked, “Ah yes, I am happy you find it _cool_ , little Jupiter. But what is the message in this story?”

Jupiter shrugged.

“Think about it,” Aunt Nino insisted.

Jupiter frowned deeply and twisted herself further into her blankets, “I don’t know. It’s good to share what you have?”

“That is right, but there are many morals in this story,” Aunt Nino encouraged, “The Prince has everything he could ever want, but doesn’t have what he wants – the chance to share and give to others. There is also a message, that to learn your students you must be at their level. You must never talk down to people like you are smarter than they are.”

“And it’s about being kind, right? Jupiter starts timidly but grows a stronger voice as her Aunt nods encouragingly, “It’s about doing good things? Good things even though you don’t get anything in return?”

Aunt Nino looks delighted, and from here a tradition of sharing stories is born.

-

Jupiter is exasperated and irritated and she wants to get up and storm and rage and yell. She needs to do something, anything, because she’s been talking, and people have been listening but not _hearing_. She doesn’t have the luxury of shouting through, because this is her first meeting with the heads of her household, as selected by Stinger and Caine. She takes stock of them again and again, if only because they look utterly titillated that she remembers all their names. The bar that Seraphi Abrasax set is apparently, dismally low, especially towards the end of her life.

Her Lady Chamberlain is a bee splice, who is apparently Stinger’s fifth or sixth cousin. He’d come to her wringing his hands, vowing that she was incredibly talented, and he wasn’t trying to suggest her out of familial loyalty. The woman is called Mellona Bombini – apparently a purebred Abrasax bee splice made by the famous bee-splicing family Potnia employed by the Abrasax for over fifteen millennia. She has a long face, with lips painted yellow and black smeared about her eyes to make her yellow hexagonal eyes pop. It is her Chamberlain who will be responsible for the running of her household while Jupiter stays on Earth to figure out what the hell she’s going to do with royal responsibilities.

“I’m afraid I’m not sure if I follow, your majesty,” Mellona attentively speaks as Jupiter sinks her face into her hands, “If her majesty would be so kind as to perhaps, rephrase her demand? It is perhaps a translation error or an issue with the software making your words so curious.”

“Okay, so from what I understand, there’s a Commonwealth. This Commonwealth covers this entire galaxy. The Commonwealth sets galactic laws to ensure the Entitled don’t fuck shit up. The House of Abrasax owns 38% of the galaxy – which is the most of any Royal House. They own some of this through Abrasax Industries – which is the commercial side that the House uses to generate income.  But the House of Abrasax also owns a lot of planets, and moons which are basically communal property for any member of the Royal Family and are also used by humans and splices as like, places to live and work. I’m doing okay so far?”

Mellona gave her a short and efficient nod.

“Great! So, the House of Abrasax owns a shit-load of space, which is officially known as the Abrasax sector, or the Abrasax Province. This is its own nation-state which sets its own laws, as long as they don’t conflict with galactic laws. There is technically something called a colloquium split into the Upper and Lower levels. The Upper levels represents all the Noble Houses who live, work or trade within the Abrasax Province. The heads of all Noble Houses are given a seat by right, and rich merchant families can buy a seat from disgraced Noble families. So, the Upper Colloquium is split between the ‘lower Entitled’ and the newly rich merchants. The Lower Colloquium are people who have been elected to take positions either individually by members of the Abrasax family, or collectively as a single seat for organisations? So, the Aegis gets one seat, and so does the Asclepius who are kinda like intergalactic medical hospital or something? Fine. I’m doing well so far?”

Mellona smiled, “You are exactly right your majesty.”

“Great,” Jupiter lent forward, “So, I wanna hold an election. I want every adult, human, splice, android or both or none at all to be able to vote for a candidate in the Colloquium.”

“I’m not sure I follow, your majesty.” Mellona replied, looking frightened even as she said those words, she exchanged a look with Stinger that was filled with dread.

“Maybe if I explain my thought process?” Jupiter helpfully added, “Okay, so I was on earth and I went to the grocery store to help Kiza grab some things for her house. She cooked dinner but later that night she and Stringer got a little sick: they were dizzy and slurring their words – and after that I found out that I’d grabbed a broccoli that wasn’t organic. It had pesticides on it? And I learned that most Splices’ with DNA from insects or amphibians or fish have to eat organic food because they’re so sensitive to pesticides. And then I did some research and like, over 80% of all commercial crops within the Abrasax sector is made using pesticides, and that all bills and laws surrounding pesticides are voted on by the Colloquium, which has five different heads of pesticide companies but not a single splice? That’s not brilliant.”

Jupiter paused to drink some water and rest for voice for just a moment.

“What I’m saying, is that I didn’t know one thing and my friends were hurt. I can’t know everything. That’s why I need experts. That’s why all of you are here. Who is a better expert on themselves, than well, the people? SO! I’m thinking we use out divine right to create about a hundred seats, and ask people if they’ll run a campaign and you know, convince people to vote for them and we’ll get people who actually know something about themselves to advocate for themselves?” Jupiter gestured at Stinger, who looked just as uncomfortable as Mellona, “Stringer’s daughter Kiza is on this super-cool website where people her age are sharing their stories and trying to advocate for themselves – I know it’s dangerous. I know I’m asking a lot from people, and if I have to personally stick a bodyguard around every single person, I help get elected then so be it!”

Mellona blinked, “If you want a law to change, your Majesty, you don’t need to go through the Colloquium. You could simply tell us what you want, and we’ll see it fit that your divine words are carried out throughout the Province.”

“Oh look, we’re absolutely getting to that,” Jupiter cheerfully responded, “But for now, I’ve asked Kiza to send you all a little light reading on what an election means, what representation means, and I guess, the concept of democracy? We can call a short lunch while everyone takes a look at those documents?”

They take a short lunch, all sitting at a ridiculously ornate and opulent table made of no less that 76 precious stones, and wood from an ancient extinct tree from a long-dead planet. Jupiter eats a light lunch of sweet berries from a nearby planet which taste of pomegranates dipped in honey, which have been stuffed with a cheese filled with nuts and candied fruit. It takes a while, but she can hear the noises being made around her. Stunned and frightened but growing in rebellion. She shoots a look at Caine who has been silently standing at her back, and when he smiles, it’s far more hopeful than she’s ever seen before.

Aritimi, her Royal Astronomer is whispering furiously to her assistants over which planets would possibly count and which would not. Her Historiographer and Political Adviser have brought they heads together to work from the same tablet. Her Royal Botanist, Tapio is frowning over his reports and thinking deeply. To his side, her Royal Archivist, Pergamum seems to have called for the Royal Scribe, Enheduanna, and the Royal Steward to gather around a set of tablets being set up strategically.

There are only three members of her household who haven’t started freaking out at her plants to democratize the universe. Kiza, her new Mistress of the Robes (A title which Jupiter firmly believes is just a fancy way of saying ‘shopping buddy’), her new Bargemaster Stinger Apini, and Caine Wise, her illustrious Chief of Security or Royal Guard, depending on whatever mood Jupiter is feeling on any given day. She takes the time to glance over her new Royal Household, and then she lets her eyes drift to the proverbial elephant in the room. There is a giant statue of Seraphi Abrasax standing in an alcove behind the table. Apparently, the column is load-bearing, so she can’t rip the damned thing out. She wonders for the tiniest of a second, if Seraphi would approve of the steps she’s taking, given her attitudes toward the end of her life, but at the end it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t seek approval from dead women with a hundred millennia of blood dripping from her hands.

At least the statue is in grey-scale. In the far garden on this Palanquin, there is a looping hologram of Seraphi standing beside the lake. It is her very being, recorded two millennia before her death. It’s _startling_ , to see how very much alike they are. There are subtle differences. It had been explained to her briefly by Kiza, who mostly used the intergalactic google to figure things out. Kiza had sat her down and showed her pictures of identical musician twins from earth.

“They have the exact same DNA,” Kiza had told her, “But look, that one has bigger and rounder eyes, and the other has a narrower and thinner jaw and hollowed cheeks. There’s something called epigenetics, which is all the tiny things that are altered by exercise, nutrition, your environment. Sometimes recurrences look completely different!”

She could see the subtle difference when she stood close to the hologram. Seraphi was taller, with wider shoulders and hips. Her thins were plumper, her eyes narrower, her cheeks sharper. Her hair was a shade or two darker, and her skin a shade lighter. Her eyes are different. Seraphi’s eyes are blue, a terrifying emotionless icy colour. Jupiter’s eyes are not blue. Her left eye is as green as her father’s, and her right as brown as her mother’s. She is glad for the difference, so when she faces the colorless stone statue of Seraphi in the diplomatic hall, she can feel her soul withering away.

Her people come back to the table when Jupiter is on her third cup of bright-pink juice. When Caine presses his warm hands on her shoulder, just to check in to see if she is okay. This is the first meeting she has called for her new staff. She is asking a lot of them all.

“It would be an expensive undertaking,” Her Steward, Juno Moneta finally says, “I can calculate the projections and send a report within a week, as long as I am able to choose my staff – according to the stipulations you have given me, of course.”

“Do it,” Jupiter responds.

“We have census records,” Her Royal Archivist responds with a hum, “But do you mean to say that every person will have a vote, one which is completely confidential, and is to be cast without anyone forcing you to vote a certain way? I will have to look into the laws that legal owners of biogenes can ask of Splices with those genes.”

“That’s the idea.” Jupiter confirms, "Look at whatever you must and gimme ideas on how to find loopholes."

“No one knows what a campaign is supposed to be,” Her Royal Scribe responds with a frown, “We’re going to have to teach people about it first. I can draw up some ideas about that.”

“What’s your ultimate plan, your majesty?” Her Royal Botanist is the person who voices the question that everyone is thinking but didn’t dare ask.

Jupiter doesn’t really know how to begin to describe the world she wants to help build.

“I can send them all the seasons of Star Trek,” Kiza helpfully offers, and yeah? That works. She and Kiza have been hanging out enormously – there’s a shared history that starts with Kiza, too sick to leave home, watching reruns of Star Trek while bundled up on the couch, while tiny child Jupiter crept out early in the morning for the same reason. Both loved the stars in any form, though for different reasons. Jupiter for wonder, and hope and longing for a world of compassion and acceptance – where the word _alien_ was said only as a fact, and not as a judgement.

Kiza, for a world that could be better and kinder than the one waiting for her.

“Make it so,” Jupiter responds, just to hear Kiza snort like a dork, “Lets build us a United Federation of Planets. But first, let’s tear down a tsarist regime, and make ol’ grandpa Ivan Bolotnikov proud of me.”

Cultural knowledge is a two-way street and literally no one gets her joke, but she’s pretty proud of herself all the same.

“This is going to take us months to figure out,” Her Royal Scribe announces in joy, “Imagine the history being made here, around this table.”

“It’s funny you mention that,” Jupiter brightly responds, “Because next on our agenda, is the things we’re absolutely going to just declare and make law. Tell me, has anyone here heard about the concept of ‘the age of consent?’ Actually, lets just start with 'consent'.”

-

Stinger and Kiza give her a tablet and Stinger quirks his eyebrow up at her as she stares down at the overly ornate gold plated and diamond encrusted thing in distaste. They tell her it’s, well, the universes’ answer to _Wikipedia_ , and they tell her to read as much as she can about the universe in her spare time.

It’s meant to fill in the gaps between what she knows and what she doesn’t. Her political Adviser, Petauista Belos can teach her about how politics function in the universe, and her Historical Adviser Caelifera Sarcina can teach her the name and history of every single planet – but they can’t teach her the culture. The fact of the matter is, there are so many cultures that she is expected to effortlessly glide through. There is the old standard Orous culture, from which the entitled live and die by (more or less), the specific cultures from on Orous that once were countries millions of years ago but which still impact the trade and deals between Royal Families, then there is the more standard culture across the ‘verse, and there is the specific Abrasax culture that her not-family have encouraged within their imperial-nation state-corporation-religion.

She knows the answer to this, as in she can regurgitate the facts. Her not-family hail from the area of Orous once known as Ennoia, which means that families that hail from that region will be friendlier towards her, but families from Epinoia will despise her, humans from both Ousia and Sarkic were brought extinct in the very first harvesting – but their DNA is still grown and used to seed planets, and all descendants from Kenoma are now splices. The names of small countries and people have been lost in history.

She can recite that the capital of Orous is Ánassa, but no-one but the most learned could tell you, since there is no point making distinctions between ‘cities’ when the whole planet is one giant city. It is here that the very first Abrasax rose as a Queen, billions of years ago. Her name was Ku-Baba in her local dialect, but Inana in standard Orous. She was said to spin life from the bodies of those who dare sack her city, and it is here that the line of Inana Ánassa, slowly over time grew and changed with culture and language to Seraphi Abrasax. She does not know if there are different cultures still on Orous today – if those ancient cities have held onto their differences and traditions and beliefs. The only surviving religion was Kybelism, whose followers, the kybêbos feverently believe in reincarnation, recurrence, or the ousali – the return of souls.

There are real priestesses who devoutly believe in the divine right of Queens to dominate the stars: The Entitled return again and again to abuse that religious belief to slaughter the cosmos. There are no stories of Queens who are also not bringers of death.

They bring her the tablet so no one has to look her in the eye and tell her the things she wants to know. They have been raised on stories of the Entitled killing the proverbial messenger, and no matter how much she can promise she’s not like the rest, she cannot fault their instincts.

She knows they expect her to read up on politics, the intergalactic news, stock prices and entitled gossip – but she doesn’t.

Instead, she _reads_.

There is a story on Orous, a story so old that there is no author. It has been told and retold hundreds of thousands of millions of times – the entitled version of a Shakespearian play so to speak. It is the oldest story known on the planet, and the story is different in every form, every retelling, but the details always remain the same.

_In the ancient time there was a great Queen from an old Imperial family called Selas who ruled over a whole solar system of planets. She had been the first of her family to take to the stars, but it came at a great loss. Her entire family and household were sacrificed to give her enough life to establish an empire amongst the stars._

_Her hair was as white as snow, and her face as regal as a Goddess should bear. She had seeded her solar system over a million years ago and installed her favored court ladies to each of the planets to ensure they grew and thrived. Each of these court ladies were beautiful, fierce and bravely loyal, and so Queen Selas gave them great honor to allow them to manage her affairs._

_While she waited for each of the planets to bear the fruits of human lives, she built a grand alcazar on the most beautiful moon of her system. From here, she watched while life sprung up around her. Here, she planned to grow an empire to honor and adore her, as anyone should honor, love and praise a goddess._

_The glorious Queen grew lonely in her old age, however. Her own mother, a Glorious Warrior-Queen in her own right, had long-since passed away, her recurrence to be awaited. To regain the glory which had been lost when her mother had passed, and her simple father and meek brothers had been left to install in her the strength of a Warrior-Queen. Queen Selas grew worried that one day, her own heir would be raised in such a manner. Queen Selas called upon her court ladies, and declared that soon, she would bear an heir, a daughter of great renown, intensive intelligence, youthful beauty and strategic wisdom. She declared that each planet would send their finest warrior, to protect her heir, and gain their own great reward of eternal life._

_Soon, the radiant Queen gave life to a daughter, a white-haired girl with eyes silver with wisdom. She was presented to the universe with a gasp and with awe. Her very DNA was something completely new, never before having seen life. The Queen was overjoyed that her daughter was a creature who had been borne into godliness, into entitlement, and had never before seen life. Her brand-new soul could be shaped into the most glorious Queen that the Caulacau dynasty had ever seen. In the fashion of that age, she named her daughter Selas, after herself. In tribute, the planets presented their Queen with four great warrior women, and they were Veneris the lovely, Merx the sage, Mawort the passionate, and Dyews the courageous._

_The Princess Selas was an ethereal child. The most stunning beauty to have ever been born, with sharp clever eyes and power beyond all that could compare. Her youth was everlasting, eternal, and the mother and daughter ruled over the stars for thousands of years. But she was a young child and was dearly-hearted in the way that only the very young can be. The Queen allowed her daughter to accompany her, to visit the many worlds under their possession. Along with her came the four warrior-women chosen to guard the Princess._

_But then, one day, on the planet below the Queen’s awe-inspiring alcazar, the humans of the planet started to build their cities and towns, and they crowned a King who had a son, a false-prince called Endyein. The Queen was furious that the planet dare give praise to another mortal, when they knew of the moon Queen who lived above their heads._

_The Princess Selas on an envoy visit on behalf of her mother, met this false-Prince, and he saw how powerful and godly she was, and he desired her for himself. He was a trickster, a liar, a half-bred human, a mortal cursed to only a fraction of a mortal life, and soon he lied and cheated her young heart until he tricked her into courting. Through his yellow teeth he dare tell the young Princess that he would see his own crown broken, if only the young Princess would come down from the heavens every five suns to sit with him in his garden._

_The cruel false-Prince was known for cruelty, even on his own world. Another half-breed from within his father’s court, a mistress known as Vaiḍūrya had long lived with love in her heart, for the cruel peasant-Prince. She had been courted in his way, and the Prince had been promised to her hand, before he met the beautiful Princess Selas._

_When vaiḍūrya learned of the Princess-Goddess Selas, and the false-Prince she grew white with rage. She was a sorceress,  and when the Princess Selas came down to the false-Prince’s planet she snuck uboard the Princesses palanquin and sent a secret message to the enemy of the Caulacau, a wicked Queen who may have been named Materies, or Mayr or Mayri or Materiae – but we will never know, for her name has been swallowed up by the ages. The wicked Queen told the sorceress to commit the gravest of sins. To slaughter a goddess, and kill the false-Prince, so the sorceress would be crowed a Queen._

_Vaiḍūrya the sorceress used her terrible magics to stage a revolt against the Queen and her daughter above. The false-Prince grew enraged, but he was a greedy man, and he fanned the flames of rebellion in hopes of killing his own father and seizing the small false-throne of his insignificant land. The false-Prince was a foolish man, and he called for the Princess Selas to walk with him, to quell the rebellion. The Princess was loyal to her family and vowed to end this rebellion which angered her mother so. The Princess’s four warrior-women glided behind them, both as effortless and as deadly as the stars._

_They walked upon the wooden sticks the half-breeds dare call a palace, and before the foolish false-Prince could utter a single word – the sorceress thrust a blade between his ribs and killed him. Then she turned her face upon the Princess and declared that the wicked Queen would soon be here to destroy all the Goddesses and Gods across all the planets. In grief and suffering with the knowledge that the Princess had brought great suffering upon her family, through her weakness, she pulled the sword from the false-Princes’ body and ended her own life._

_The eldest of the warrior-women, Veneris the lovely, bravely took her sword and slaughtered the evil sorceress who had killed their Princess. They called for the Great-Queen Selas to save her daughter’s life with her water of life, but the Queen despaired that her daughter had already departed this world. In great suffering, the Queen killed the four warrior-women who had failed to protect her daughter, and declared that they forevermore, would be charged with protecting the Princess Selas in all her eternal lives as punishments for the many failures. The Queen Selas grew her empire but harvests every planet in her solar system which killed her daughter and she bathed in the life they gave her, which was not worth even a millionth as much as her daughter. She waited millions upon millions of years until her daughter came back to her-_

_-and one day, millions of years after the death of the Princess Selas, the girl is born on the very same planet she had died, at the same time as her four warriors. They are reborn, into a ;land which vows peace and tradition,  and the Princess is found by her four warriors, who vow to protect her with their lives. The Queen finds her when she is aged but fourteen years, and together, the Queen and Princess take to the stars and grow an empire of unfathomable size. Then they return to the planet, and they harvest every last human from its surface._

_-_

The moral of the story is never fail in your duty. The moral of the story is to never change the status quo. The moral of the story is to never fail to live up to the expectations of your family. The moral is, never be so foolish as to trust a tersie. The moral is, everyone is disposable to the Entitled. The moral is if you do harm to an Entitled, they will come for your friends, your family, your culture, your society, your planet, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. The moral is, the entitled will bathe in the life they rip from your body.

The moral is, an entitled can control your destiny, even before you are ever born.

The lesson is that the entitled must be cruel and decisive, and never caring because the bad halfbreeds of the world will lie and cheat and steal to gain something that is not their divine right. The lesson is that the Entitled do not care about you.

The story is called the “Silubrą-smar of the Caulacau” which doesn’t translate at all because it’s such an _ancient dialect_ of Orous that's so heavily religious, that no-one speaks or reads it anymore. She’s just curious enough that she researches, and finds it means something like “silver mourning” or “silver remembering” – but the cultural knowledge slips through her fingers like sand and she doesn’t quite understand enough to know why this story – and whether it was real or not is hotly contested – is so very popular. She sneaks off to find Kiza, who is curled up on a couch with a battered book on herbalism with a million questions dancing on the tip of her tongue.

“Oh,” Kiza responds, looking rather confused at Jupiter’s presence, “Well, yeah. I did a book report on it once. Dad made me.”

“What does it mean though?” Jupiter presses, settling into the seat beside the girl, “Why?”

Jupiter is struggling with words, and she’s not sure what to ask. Asking _why?_ To an entire culture is a monumental feat, something that can be done as easily as tempering a hurricane. Kiza considered her words, and looks back seriously at her, before she shrugs her shoulders and twists her legs underneath her body.

“You teach your children the values you want them to have through stories,” Kiza offers, “In your subjects, your highness, what better values than loyalty above all, with the reminder of the consequences of treachery and failure? It’s also terribly beautiful isn’t it? To have a mother and daughter waiting for the other to be reborn together, to seek vengeance.”

Jupiter drops her eyes and feels the weight of a toxic culture pressing down on her, until her lungs cry out with rage. She doesn’t say anything more, but Kiza is buzzing nervously beside her. When Jupiter chooses her words, they come out so very carefully, and so very very slow.

“I – I mean, I don’t personally see it that way,” Jupiter keeps pausing, afraid of how Kiza may react, “It’s just that – I see it as a warning, I guess, I just don’t see it as a good thing to want to seek vengeance. Look. I hear that story, and I think, at every point, they all had the opportunity to be better people, but they didn’t, because they were greedy, or selfish, or prideful, but I personally believe that because we can be better people, we have a duty to be better people. Bad things happen, but killing a whole planet because one person did something terrible? That’s a tragedy, that’s something to be mourned.”

Jupiter inhaled sharply as she tried to put it into words, Kiza is patient, as she always is, but looks so very confused.

“I don’t think there’s a point where I can ever say that I’m a good person. _Being good_ , is _doing good_ , and that’s a commitment you have to make forever?” Jupiter shrugs, “My family has a concept of something called _chesed_ , which is kinda like a loving-kindness. And we all have a duty to that – no single person is obligated to _complete_ the work needed to repair the world, but we all are _obligated to take part_. It doesn’t matter to me if I become known as the recurrence of Seraphi Abrasax trying to liberate the universe. It doesn’t matter if they know my name is Jupiter Jones, what matters is that justice is done? I’m sorry, this has gotten a lot weirder than I thought it would.”

“If you don’t, well, _value_ , those values of Orous,” Kiza starts slowly, nervously, apprehensively, and her words feel like a little bit of rebellion, “Then you must show us what you expect of us.”

Jupiter turns her eyes and a smile stretches across her face.

“Do you want to know what I watched, the values I learned from the stories around me?” Jupiter asks, and something between them changes. Kiza nods her head sharply, as Jupiter reaches for her laptop.

They binge-watch a whole season of Sailor Moon, and something twists inside Jupiter’s stomach. The story is much the same: A girl discovers that she is the reincarnation of royalty, and they give her the stars. But in this story, the moral is that again and again Sailor Moon choses love. Love for her family, love for her friends, love for the entire universe. She too, may be immortal, and she never succumbs to despair or loses her morality. She stands tall against every threat, and vows to be a protector.

“Oh,” Kiza says, when they finish the first season early in the morning, “ _Oh_.”

 “I want to show you everything that, I think taught me how to be me,” Jupiter says, and fists her hands, “I grew up watching Sailor Moon. The Princess Diaries. Anastasia – the 1997 version my family _hated_ – heck, even Star Wars, Winx Club. Xena, the warrior Princess. She-Ra: Princesses of Power. All of these movies and television shows show Princesses being a force of good in the universe. I can only be what I see – and this is what my planet has taught me. To always choose kindness, to always chose to be a champion, to always strive to do better. If I’m going to be a Queen, then I’m going to take the traits and values from all these stories, and I’m going to make it my own.”

Kiza doesn’t reply to her, but she doesn’t need to. Instead Kiza passed over a blanket, and the two relax into a peaceful silence. Again, and again, she will choose love over vengeance, because her stories have only ever told her one way of being.

Tomorrow Kiza will slip away for just a second, before she uploads these stories into the universe. Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the universe, and from these stories she constructs her own myths. She spins the story of a Queen ascendant, built from a mix of cultures that looked upon slavery with disgust, valued the worth of any voice (even a _Splice_ ), fought for a universe of _loving-kindness_ and life. A Queen who armed herself with only stories.

A Queen _born_ from stories.

But for tonight, they sleep.

 


End file.
